Typography - Project 1

03/05/19 - 17/05/19 (Week 5 - Week7)
Qaezie Ayeman Ramlan (0332981)
Typography
PROJECT 1

Lecture Notes

Lecture 5 _ Understanding Letterform & Specific for Project 1
Week 5 (3/5/19)

Its week 5 and its the day we start close the book to exercises start on our Project 1. In todays lecture Mr.Vinod filled us in more on Letterforms.

We all know that each font has its own has its own uniqueness example serif/san-serif, but if you look at a letter of a particular type face close enough, you'll realise that even the letters have their own distinctive differences despite being the same family. And these little details are done so the font/typeface becomes more accepting to the human eye.

Image 1.0 Extracted from Mr.Vinods Slides

Moving on, to proof this theory he showed us how some letters are forced togo above the median line or sink below the baseline in order to appear aligned.

Image 1.1 Extracted from Mr.Vinods Slide

Image 1.2 Extracted from Mr.Vinods Slides

To end the first half of the class he further explained this occurrence by comparing two lowercase letters with, similar fonts Halvetica & Univers.

Image 1.3 Extracted from Mr.Vinods Slides

After intermission we came back we went straight to briefing us on the specifics for Project 1, so we can start ideating.

Image 1.4 Project1 Preset Details.

Lecture 6 _ Basic InDesign Operation / Specific for Project 1
Week 6 (10/5/19)

No lecture was given this week, but instead we were briefed on the basic operations on InDesign and more on Specifics for Project 1. We are to show them our sketches from last week's ideation process and get feedback start digitalising and finalising on our ideas.

I took down a few notes on shortcuts, buttons and symbols that we should be aware of when using InDesign.

Lecture 7 _ Week 7 (17/5/19)

No lecture was given. We were all just asked to try to understand the concept better, he asked everyone to open up their laptop and blockout our compositions with black and white colour, and everyone is to stand behind the layout they feel has potential. And everyone continued on with theyre own work.

Instructions

Project 1

Week 5 (3/5/19)

Project 1 includes us to rework on a an article called 'First Things First Menifesto 2000'.

A manifesto written up in the year 2000 and signed by 33 notable visual communicators. Essentially the whole manifesto was a call for change on peoples or the publics mindset over visual communicators, graphic designers, typographers & the industry as a whole.

From the get go I knew I didn't want be too elaborate on the design. It's a manifesto, a serious matter. It should be simple, not too distracting and the priority was on the message i'm conveying.

These are a few of my sketches.

( Image of sketched will be inserted here)

Mr.Vinod showed us an example of a done article and I realised he/or she decided to have the first paragraph of the article to share the same page as the headline. And i thought this was very smart, as it gave more room for the second page which means i didn't have to figure out how to cramp all this information onto one page.

I gave the article around 5 reads to properly understand whats going on and started dissecting the article on what is what. Starting from the Heading, Sub-Heading, Introduction, Body & Conclusion.

Figure 1.1 Identifying Heading and Sub-Heading

Figure 1.2 Identifying Intro, Body & Conclusion

Figure 1.3 Identifying Important Information.

Moving forward I started to roughly digitalise my idea. Paying no attention to the tracking, leading & kerning and font size just yet. This was to get the general image of the composition, like placement of the headline and which information needed to come off strong and a which didn't.

Figure 1.4 First Attempt on Arrangement.

For my first attempt I had the headline big and bold as thats the first thing i want people to read with the sub heading right under. I had all the texts in one page including the 33 names of signee's. Futura as the font, to keep it simple and less distracting. And lastly underlining the sub-heading & the last paragraph of the article to give the readers a sense of closure.

Figure 1.5 Second Attempt on Arrangement .

The second attempt everything was still the same except I tried having the main headline & subheading bold and smack in the centre.

Mr.Vinod showed us an example of a done article and I realised he/or she decided to have the first paragraph of the article to share the same page as the headline. And i thought this was very smart, as it gave more room for the second page which means i didn't have to cramp all the information onto one page. Giving more breathing space for the readers.

Figure 1.6 Third Attempt on Arrangement.

Figure 1.7 Fourth Attempt on Arrangement.

On my third and fourth attempt I tried applying the said technique Mr.Vinod demonstrated and added the same treatment I gave the sub-heading and the last paragraph of the article (underline) to the introduction. I realised it also gave the readers an indication of the start and ending of the passage. I decided having the headline & subheading all aligned to the left and tried different placement.

Week 6 (10/4/19)

It's the second week on this project & based on the feedback I got from last week's class I decided to take a step back for a moment and see where i'm going wrong. To reevaluate my decisions, which were.

1. My choice of font, Futura.
2. Having the headline big and bold & aligned to the left.
3. Having the introduction in the same page as the heading and sub-heading.

4. Keep the last two concluding paragraphs together.
5. The underlining of the sub-heading, introduction & the last paragraph.

And I realised, that it's not about where I am going wrong but where I am going with the whole article in general. What is the idea behind my design and what is the article trying to convey. After much thought over week 5's feedback I decided to translate the concept of rebel and authority literally.

Option 1, have the whole article aligned to the right. Option 2, align the whole article to the right and have them read from right to left. Option 3, having a portion of the article upside down.

And after taking in the consideration of readability level, effectiveness in conveyance of message and not to mention the overall feel of the whole article, I decided to go for Option 3, having a portion of the article upside down.

Figure 2.0 Fifth and final Attempt on Arrangement.

I decided that the heading & sub-heading will be the portion I flip. Reason behind is because, I wanted to put not only more emphasis on the bold-big headline, but also to be the hook to get readers, from flipping to the next page. It adds a sense of curiosity, on whats going on. While still maintaining the simplicity and overall feel of the article.

And this is also where the literal translation of rebel and authority comes in. By simply flipping the heading I not only gave the article an unconventional feel but also, I as the designer/visual communicator have just forced you to turn your magazine upside down just to decipher on what i have to say, and even made you curios enough to continue reading till the end of the manifesto. And that's one less ignorant person in the world that I have educated.

Week 7 (17/5/19)

It's submission day and all Im left to do now is to clean up the finer details of the article. General alignment, standardising font size, spacing between words, looking out for forced line breaks, irregular ragging, hyphens, spacing between paragraphs and lastly regulating number of characters in a line.

Figure 3.0 Final Work Submission.

Feedback

Week 5 (3/5/19)

No feedback were specifically given but one thing Mr.Vinod kept on stressing on was we are designers, not decorators. There's a big difference. And that got me thinking alot, wondering where i stand. Whether I am thinking hard enough or am I thinking too hard. Because I definitely have not found it, the idea.

Week 6 (10/5/19)

First we found out that we had to edit our blogs. I had to change my theme and he asked to be more consistent with my spacing and font size.

Moving on to our assignment, after telling him my newly found idea, Mr.Vinod surprisingly found it valid. IT WAS APPROVED! And now it's just to focus on cleaning up and doing proper formatting leading, kerning, pt size and smoothen the edges.

Week 7 (17/5/19)

This was the last feedback before i printing it out, 1) He told me to lower down the names pt size to 8, he reckons theres no need to give them more emphasis 2) Remember to use the thumb rule when its comes to tracking, and not make it look too obvious or create rivers and 3) He also reminded me to make sure the spacings between the paragraphs and underlines should all be the same.

Reflection

Week 5 (3/5/19)
Mr.Vinod kept on stressing on was we are designers, not decorators. There's a big difference. And that got me thinking alot, wondering where i stand. Whether I am thinking hard enough or am I thinking too hard. Because I definitely have not found it, the idea.

Week 6 (10/5/19)
Were two weeks in for this project and surprisingly, Mr.Vinod accepted my idea & it felt great.

Week 7 (17/5/19)
It was submission day, and honestly only towards the end did I realise why and what I was doing.